Turkiye’s preferred spelling is changed at ally’s request!

WASHINGTON: Following months of deliberation, the US State Department said on Thursday that it has finally acceded to a request from the NATO ally and accepted Turkiye’s preferred spelling for the name of the nation. Although the pronunciation won’t change, the department has mandated that future official papers use Turkiye instead of Turkiye. However, as of Thursday at noon, neither the Foreign Affairs Manual nor the State Department website had been updated to reflect the change.

The US administration has been asked to refer to Turkey as the ‘Republic of Turkiye’ in correspondence, according to the department. ‘ In most official, diplomatic, and bilateral circumstances, including in public communications, we will begin to refer to Turkiye and Republic of Turkiye appropriately’. The action comes ahead of the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu’s anticipated trip to Washington later this month, during which Turkey’s stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its opposition to Finland and Sweden’s membership in NATO will be high on the agenda.

There were discrepancies in papers throughout the US government since a number of other federal departments, such as the Treasury Department, had already adopted the new spelling. The modification was made public at the same time that the State Department issued a statement endorsing a Treasury decision to penalise seven Turkiye-related businesspeople and organisations for their support of the Islamic State. Later, it was corroborated by two department representatives.

The United Nations and NATO were among the organisations that adopted the new spelling after Turkiye requested it in international forums last year. However, the State Department seldom modifies its usage of foreign country names, and in at least one famous instance, it has done so for decades.

Despite Burma’s military leadership formally adopting Myanmar in 1989, the US continues to refuse to refer to the nation as Myanmar. North Macedonia, which changed its name from Macedonia in 2019, and Eswatini, which changed its name from Swaziland a year earlier, were the most recent two nations that the State Department renamed on the request of their governments.